‘What do the Crystallites want us to do?’
Jamieson answered in a sarcastic, singsong voice. ‘They want us to stay on the coast, build cathedrals, burn incense, sing prayers all day, and bring in pilgrims from the known universe. Pilgrims who slap down consumer chits with both hands just to look at a Presence through a scope and even more to get within a few miles of one. That’s about it.’
‘Stated with Jamieson’s usual contempt for complexity,’ Tasmin chided, ‘but essentially true. They have quite a commercial empire built around pilgrimage. And, sad to say, the emergence of the Crystallites seems to have been what caused BDL to revise its own position on the Presences.’
Clarin thought about this. ‘Oh, of course! If people really thought the Presences were sentient, and if the Planetary Exploitation Council thought so, too, then BDL probably couldn’t have exploitation rights to Jubal anymore. BDL might be deported, and it wouldn’t like that one little bit. But … if BDL defines the Presences as nonsentient …’
‘Not if,’ said Jamieson. ‘Since. BDL’s been defining the Presences as nonsentient for fifty years. Even though we all know they are….’
‘Jamieson!’
The boy threw up his hands, saying in an argumentative tone, ‘Well, we do, Master Ferrence. I don’t know a single ’Singer who believes they’re nonsentient. No matter what he may say on the outside, inside he knows.’
‘He or she,’ said Clarin in a patient tone. ‘There are women singers, too, you know.’ It was obviously not the first time she had reminded Jamieson of this.
Tasmin sighed. Did he really want to spend effort cleaving to the BDL line on this trip? Did he want this continuing tug of war with Jamieson? Jamieson, who was, Tasmin reminded himself, one of the most talented singers it had ever been Tasmin’s duty to try and whip into some kind of acceptable shape. Reb Jamieson? The everlasting mutineer? Who sang as he sang at least partly because he believed the Presences heard and understood what he sang? And Clarin. Clarin the what? He looked at her, but her face was turned down and he saw only the unlined curve of her forehead and the busy working of her hands on her bootlaces.
He chose peace. ‘All right, Jamieson, say what you like on this trip. Say it to me. Say it to Clarin; she seems to have good sense. Say that the BDL has been trying to redefine the Presences as nonsentient for the last fifty years so BDL won’t be threatened with expulsion. Say that most of us, Tripsingers and Explorers, don’t really believe that. Say it here by the campfire. But don’t, for God’s sake, say it out loud in the citadel when we get back, or in any other citadel we may stop at. I won’t flame in on you if you’ll be halfway discreet.’ He astonished himself with an enormous yawn.
The boy nodded, his face bright red in the fire glow. ‘Even though we all know they’re sentient, it’s different from being sure. I mean if anybody could prove it, the Planetary Exploitation Council might make BDL pack up and get out, so BDL won’t let that happen.’
‘BDL means you and me, too,’ sighed Tasmin. ‘If we’re being honest, none of us wants it to happen. So, be half-way discreet.’
‘It’s a kind of hypocrisy, isn’t it?’ Clarin asked softly.
Jamieson shook his head at her warningly.
‘It’s interesting,’ mused Clarin. ‘I hadn’t paid much attention to all of this Crystallite business. We were very isolated up Northwest, and it’s closer there to the ’Soilcoast than it is to the interior. There are a number of Crystallite temples on the ’Coast, though. I do know that.’
‘Lots of temples,’ Tasmin agreed drowsily. ‘And lots of pilgrims coming in. Business versus business. Brou Distribution Limited against the Crystallites.’
‘Us in the middle,’ said Jamieson, nodding.
‘Sleep,’ Tasmin suggested again, rising and moving toward the tent. Inside the cloverleaf tent the packs were distributed, each in a separate little wing, privacy curtains half lowered. Tasmin’s bedroll was stretched out for him, the cover turned down. Clarin’s touch. Clarin? A complex person, he thought. It took a good deal of courage to come halfway across Jubal, come as a stranger to a new citadel in an area where women were not as well accepted as Tripsingers as they were in the Northeast. Well. He would undoubtedly get to know Clarin rather well.
Sighing, he lowered himself onto his bedroll and dropped the curtain, thinking about the whole BDL-Crystallite fracas. ‘Us in the middle,’ he said, intoning Jamieson’s sentiment as though it were some kind of bedtime prayer rather than the invocation of a troublesome truth.
5
The Explorers’ Chapter House at the Priory in Splash One made up in class for what it lacked in homey comforts. Or so Donatella Furz had always thought. Built in the first enthusiastic flush of planetary exploitation – back in the time before BDL realized how limited access to Jubal was actually going to be – it was a symphony of rare woods inlaid with Jubal coral, squat pillars of vitrified earth, and enormous beveled glass windows looking out onto the sea and the city. Donatella’s room had three such, a protruding roomlet facing in three directions, furnished with an elegantly laid table and two comfortable chairs. Eating breakfast in this extravagant bay window was an experience in both seeing and being seen. Half of Splash One seemed to be aware that it had a more or less famous personage among its more ordinary citizens, and a good number of them seemed to know where she was staying. Five or six young gawkers were gathered on the opposite sidewalk when she wakened that morning. They had gathered in front of a dilapidated structure, which seemed to be half saloon and half something else, both halves in danger of imminent collapse. ‘Looky, looky, Don Furz, the Explorer knight,’ their gestures said,
